Richard Burton (10 November 1925 – 5 August 1984) was a Welsh actor who became one of the most celebrated performers of the mid-twentieth century, known for a series of major film and stage roles and for his turbulent relationship with Elizabeth Taylor.
His connection to Cartier's history centres on a single extraordinary episode in 1969, and on the stone that became known as the Taylor-Burton Diamond.
The 1969 Auction
On 23 October 1969, the 69.42-carat pear-shaped diamond came up for auction at Parke-Bernet in New York. Robert Kenmore, bidding for the Kenton Corporation (Cartier's parent company), won the stone at $1,050,000, a new auction record for a diamond. Burton's agents had dropped out at $1 million as instructed.
What followed was a negotiation that brought the diamond into the Burton-Taylor story. The full account, including Burton's diary entries and the terms of the sale, is told in The Cartiers, ch. 11. The stone was displayed at Cartier New York as "the Cartier Diamond" before being shipped to Burton and Taylor, who renamed it the Taylor-Burton Diamond.
Burton had reportedly quipped when he accepted Kenmore's terms: "This diamond has so many carats it's almost a turnip."
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 12 ("The End of an Era")
- Richard Burton and Chris Williams, The Richard Burton Diaries (Yale University Press, 2013), cited in The Cartiers
- Wikipedia: Richard Burton
